What I Learned When I Stopped Applying and Started Building
From the Season 2 Series: Why Gen X Women Are Trading Resumes for Revenue and Building the Next Economy One Idea at a Time
Gen X women are quietly building the next economy…one digital product, smart system, and corporate skill at a time. This is what it looked like when I stopped waiting to be hired and started building on my own terms.
In November 2023, I walked away from my W2 job. No plan. Just a little savings, a little time, and a lot of skill. I told myself I’d take the holidays off. Rest. Reset. Find something new in January.
But January became June. And the world of work had no room for me. Not part-time. Not contract. Not full-time. Not even temporary. I was 53, with decades of experience behind me managing million-dollar projects, leading global teams, building systems for billion-dollar companies.
And still, I was invisible.
💡 Lightbulb #1: I have killer skills.
But skills don’t matter if the system isn’t hiring.
Had the landscape changed so much while I was at Dell? Yes…and no. It was still about who you know. Still about playing the game. But the return on that investment was gone.
Hundreds of applications.
No callbacks.
No interviews.
I wasn’t out of date. I had been studying AI and using it to solve data problems since 2020. I was locked out.
While I waited, I started pulling on a thread I’d been researching in my downtime on the Industrial Revolution. I wanted to understand how we moved from farms to factories to offices. And more importantly: what comes next.
What I found. It’s all collapsing. No empire lasts more than 250 years without great change or revolution. The great American experiment is 249 years old this year.
The red thread through all of it. What comes next is being built now. By oligarchs and tech bros, evangelists and theocrats. And they aren’t writing something new. They are reviving the last dumpster fire. Surveillance tech, extraction accelerated by AI, and all the bad parts of the bible.
Unless.
Unless we choose differently.
💡 Lightbulb #2: White collar jobs are disappearing.
The social contract between labor and management is broken.
We trained for jobs that no longer exist. We built resumes for systems that are now dashboards. We gave loyalty to institutions that outsourced the future. There’s no safety net in the middle. No pension at the end. No path to promotion…just a loop.
What used to be “stable” is now a maze. Twists, dead ends, and dopamine hits designed to keep us running. Recognition in place of raises. Toxic optimism in place of truth. We aren’t just overworked. We are isolated…told that resilience is a solo act. Lab rats in addiction studies, the ones without community always chose the drugs.
Now? The drugs are productivity. Endless upskilling. Being “grateful to have a job” while the walls close in. Other duties as assigned girl reporting for duty. But the layoffs come, and they come for everyone…Black women first, middle aged white women second.
This isn’t about effort or personal failure. It’s about design. The system isn’t broken. It’s working exactly as intended.
I stopped waiting.
I started building.
I wasn’t going to eat Tide Pods or dance. But I had been listening to Dan Koe talk about the one-person business for months. I tried that once, in the ’90s. I was a photographer…great work, clients by word of mouth, but the transition from film to digital was clunky. Nothing about it was scalable.
Still, I believed I could learn. So I did what we’ve all been told to do.
📚 Read the books
💬 Take the courses
📱 Show up on social media like the kids tell us
🧩 Even fell for the Canva mindset: build a planner and they will come
💡 Lightbulb #3: I’m not a beginner.
Something clicked in 2025.
I don’t need to learn how. I don’t need to learn how to write, market, or build smart systems. I’ve spent 30 years doing it…in classrooms, boardrooms, and living rooms. Selling other people’s products. Building other people’s dreams. Teaching other people’s lessons.
The tech? Easy.
The tools? Done.
The mindset? Shifting.
I’m not learning how to build. I’m learning how to own what I already know.
💡 Lightbulb #4: The gap isn’t knowledge. It’s agency.
Most women I work with already have what they need. They’ve led teams, raised families, built companies, ran departments, navigated endings and beginnings again and again.
What they lack:
Space.
Language.
Visibility.
Permission.
We’ve all said it…God grant me the confidence of a mediocre white man. The ones who fail up. The ones who believe they are entitled to belong in every room, even when they haven’t done the work to earn it.
I don’t know a woman who thinks she is enough. Not one. No matter the generation.
The truth is, we believe we lack what’s necessary to be the main character of our own lives. We believe we need another degree, another promotion, a new title to believe we are enough. But enough never comes for most women.
Agency, knowing you’re enough without condition. It isn’t granted. It’s a practice. A muscle strengthened by choosing yourself before anyone else does.
Season 2 isn’t reinvention. It’s return.
To your voice.
To your rhythm.
To your own power.
To what you wanted before the world told you to stop wanting.
You don’t need to quit everything and move to Bali. You don’t need to blow up your life. You can change it quietly…at your desk, your kitchen table. In your own time. You can build a soft, sovereign system that holds your voice, your income, and your peace.
That’s what I’m building…for myself, for women like me. The ones ready to choose themselves.
This August, I’m posting every day on LinkedIn.
Real talk.
Tactical steps.
No monk mode. No burnout. No performance.
Just clear systems, AI tools that save time, second brains that work, and offers that actually make money. If you're ready to stop applying and start building, welcome to your Season 2.
Your voice matters.
Your ideas matters.
You don’t need anyone’s permission to begin.
But if you’re looking for a little nudge 🧭 this is it.
Hi, I’m Sundee. I write at the edge where Gen X women and the world collide.
Sometimes it’s scripted. Sometimes it’s a wild tangent. But every word, every build, every rebellion is about the same thing—claiming a life they told us we couldn’t have.
On Time. On Purpose. On My Own Terms.